


Popped That

by smallpudge



Category: Persona 5
Genre: M/M, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:07:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21755806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallpudge/pseuds/smallpudge
Summary: Akira's training for the Big Bang Burger challenge is starting to have consequences. He drags his boyfriend into helping him with a small wardrobe malfunction at school.
Relationships: Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	Popped That

**Akira:** you know anything about sewing on buttons?  
  
Ryuji huffed a laugh. With only five minutes before class started, there could only be one reason Akira was texting him with a question like that.  
  
**Ryuji:** first day back and you mess up your uniform, dude?  
**Akira:** kind of  
**Akira:** hold on  
**Akira:** poppedthat.jpg  
**Akira:** mona’s pissed, it hit him  
**Akira:** hasn’t said anything but if looks could kill  
  
Ryuji nearly stumbled over his feet when the picture loaded on his phone. Yeah, Akira had lost a button; the one that should be holding his pants closed was sitting just inside his desk. Morgana, right next to it, had narrowed his blue eyes into slits as he reached out from the desk to prod Akira’s belly.  
  
Akira had angled his phone to show both the button and what had caused it to come off–his belly, pushing up his polo and jutting out proudly between the flaps of his pants now that the button was gone. Morgana’s paw disappeared as it sank into his fat.  
  
**Ryuji:** HOLY SHIT  
**Akira:** yeah  
**Ryuji:** you can’t send pics like that right before class!  
**Akira:** what  
**Ryuji:** not to sound like our prez but you said I should focus too!  
**Akira:** it’s the quickest way to explain the problem  
**Akira:** wait  
**Akira:** […]  
  
Ryuji bit his lip as the dots continued to blink on Akira’s side of the conversation. Had he jumped to conclusions about what Akira was trying to do, sending a picture like that…? Yeah, it was a quick way to explain what’d happened–he must have burst it when he sat down at his desk. But the guy had to know…  
  
**Akira:** sakamoto you kinky bastard  
**Akira:** I come to you in my hour of need  
**Akira:** and you get horny?  
**Akira:** you think it’s hot I’m too fat for my pants now?  
**Ryuji:** dude. DUDE.  
  
Oh, okay. Now Akira knew what that image was doing to him, and his boyfriend was going to have a field day with it. Crap.  
  
**Akira:** you must be proud  
**Akira:** these pants fit me fine before break  
**Akira:** but you’ve been feeding me so much  
**Akira:** pushing me to eat more and more  
**Akira:** and I have  
**Akira:** look at me now. look what you did.  
**Ryuji:** I ain’t the perv who stuffed himself before school!  
  
Ryuji held his phone screen down as he entered his classroom and darted to his seat, praying that he wasn’t getting as flushed in the face as he felt. He shoved the phone in his desk and tried to think of as many unsexy things as he could. Wrinkly old men who kept turning up the bathwater heat. Ushimaru-sensei, who was now walking into the classroom. Ushimaru pelting him with chalk, which was guaranteed to happen if he stayed flustered about his boyfriend’s teasing.  
  
After a few minutes, he felt a little calmer and figured Akira had probably gotten the mischief out of his system. The guy was a way better student than Ryuji had ever been, so he’d settle down with class started, right?  
  
He snuck a hand in his desk and flipped his phone back over to read on the sly.  
  
He was not ready for the messages Akira had sent.  
  
**Akira:** funny thing  
**Akira:** actually haven’t eaten yet today  
**Akira:** first day back, slept in a little  
**Akira:** and it took me a while to put my uniform on  
**Akira:** for some strange reason…  
**Akira:** didn’t have time for breakfast  
**Akira:** so this isn’t food  
**Akira:** I’m just a fatass  
**Akira:** a fatass who missed breakfast and is very hungry  
**Akira:** are you ignoring me?  
**Akira:** ryuji  
**Akira:** ryuji I’m hurt  
**Akira:** I’ve got broken pants and hunger pangs  
**Akira:** and I think you should take responsibility  
**Ryuji:** holy shit you know ushimaru’s my homeroom teacher, you’re gonna get me killed by chalk  
**Ryuji:** and what responsibility?! you don’t have a kid in there!  
**Akira:** lol sucker. kawakami will let me do anything as long as I don’t disrupt the class  
**Akira:** yes or no can you fix a button?  
  
Ryuji sighed.  
  
**Ryuji:** yeah  
**Ryuji:** it ain’t hard  
**Ryuji:** you could learn to do it yourself  
**Akira:** mmm not today. fix my pants and feed me and I won’t get you killed by ushimaru  
**Ryuji:** you are so damn pushy sometimes  
  
Akira liked to say it was Ryuji stuffing him full of food, but the guy was hardly passive, whether it was in leading their friends or getting his bottomless pit of a stomach filled.  
  
**Akira:** i love you <3  
**Ryuji:** […]  
**Ryuji:** ilu2  
**Ryuji:** fine, you fatty, I’ll feed you  
**Ryuji:** you better not break the pants again after I fix them  
**Akira:** ooh dirty talk  
**Ryuji:** AKIRA  
**Akira:** lol  
**Akira:** rooftop 4 lunch, I’ll leave mona w/ ann  
  
Ryuji hastily texted an ok and shoved the phone away, thumbing open his textbook right before Ushimaru’s eyes swept over him.  
  
Lunch today was going to be expensive.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Ow! Dammit!”  
  
“I thought you said you knew…”  
  
“Shaddup, I do know! You’re distracting me!”  
  
The plan for lunch had been simple. Fix Akira’s pants, feed him enough to make up for his missed breakfast but not enough for him to break the pants _again_, eat a bit himself, and maybe make out a bit before the bell rang. Okay, maybe that second part was going to get tricky, but they hadn’t even gotten past the first part, which should have been dead simple.  
  
Ryuji hadn’t accounted for how twitchy his hands might get while working with a needle. Luckily, he hadn’t jabbed Akira yet, just his own fingers. But he was kind of tempted to get one in when the jerk was laughing at his pain.  
  
“For someone who needs his pants fixed, you’re not helping the process!”  
  
“Sorry,” Akira said, his gray eyes warm with mirth. “Tell me what I’m doing to distract you. I’ll stop.“  
  
"Uh–” Ryuji floundered. "Stop–you gotta stop…“  
  
"Yeah?”  
  
“Mngh.”  
  
Fixing clothes on someone who was still wearing them was always hard. Fixing a button situated right above your boyfriend’s crotch was an endurance test of focus, and his exam score record would show Ryuji had never been too good at those.  
  
He just couldn’t stop noticing how damn tight the pants were. Akira’s calves looked fine, about the same, but him lying down with his schoolbag folded up under his head as a half-assed pillow to make Ryuji’s task at least somewhat easier made his upper thighs spread out a little and his rear spread out a lot, especially with his fly down. Ryuji had always known the uniform pants ran a bit small in sizing. That and the way the lines of the tartan-pattern fabric bulged out made it clear why Akira had run into some issues getting his uniform on this morning.  
  
Though, his butt wasn’t exactly what had broken the pants this morning. That honor belonged to Akira’s growing gut. With him lying down and his polo hitched up to be out of Ryuji’s way, most of his stomach rose in a gently-sloped dome, but he also had some flab that just melted off the sides of him, pushed by and pushing against the waistband of his pants. Akira’s quiet chuckling stopped when Ryuji’s curiosity and arousal beat out his embarrassment; he paused his clumsy efforts at sewing the button back on to grab both flaps of the pants and jerk them one way and then another, giving Akira a muffin top that jiggled like wobbly flan. The flaps wouldn’t meet. "How the hell did you even get these closed this morning?“  
  
"I…uh.” It was a rare turn for Ryuji to hear Akira flustered, which got him to look at his face. Akira was looking away. "I had to suck it in, obviously.“ He sucked his belly in to demonstrate, and Ryuji pulled again–okay, yeah, now the pants could close. …And would stay closed, if he’d finished sewing the button on already. He’d get back to that in a sec.  
  
"So when you broke ‘em, was it ‘cause…”  
  
Akira huffed, his belly expanding with the movement and forcing Ryuji’s fingers to spread a bit. "I got worked up that I’d get in trouble if I was late, so I was so relieved to get to school on time and even have a few minutes to spare that I just–sat down, and relaxed, and pop. That do it for you? Am I an official fatty now?“  
  
"What do you mean, do it for me–”  
  
“Pretty sure I’m not the only one with tight pants right now–”  
  
Something big and hollow clunked against the rooftop, making both boys freeze up before they turned their heads to look. The object that had made the sound was a plastic watering can. It was rolling to a stop at the feet of another Shujin student. A girl with light, fluffy hair.  
  
Oh, shit, right, there were plants up here–someone had to be taking care of them! But wait, they’d never run into anyone when they were using the rooftop as their hideout, not until Makoto had kicked them out! But here she was–kind of cute, actually, but not the time–  
  
“Um–” Akira’s brain was working a hair faster than Ryuji’s, as he spoke up first. "That wasn’t what it sounded like. Or maybe looks like,“ he tacked on, and Ryuji became hyper-aware that with him positioned in front of Akira, the girl had no idea what his hands were doing, but she did have a general idea of where they were situated.  
  
"Pants!” the blond blurted out, immediately cringing. "Uh–j-just…fixing my guy’s, uh, thing, nothing to see here–!“  
  
Fortunately for Ryuji, however mortified he felt, the girl was even more so, red as a tomato. "I’m so sorry!” she apologized, and even bowed, like she was the one who had done something wrong, and then she fled back down the stairwell.  
  
“Oh my god.” Akira had both hands over his face, which was turning red itself. "Oh my god.“  
  
Akira had three stages of being flustered. Stage 1: slightly flustered but more smugly pleased. Stage 2: flustered and sassy, determined to make Ryuji the more embarrassed of the two. He usually only hit those first two stages. But every once in a while, there was stage 3: flustered enough to get overwhelmed and start acting like a normal human being with an ounce of shame again.  
  
Not that it lasted long. After two seconds he took his hands from his face and grabbed a wrapped sandwich from the small pile Ryuji had brought up, its packaging crinkling as he unwrapped it. "Hey, Akira? You really think this is the time to eat?” Ryuji asked in disbelief.  
  
“I’m not getting expelled on an empty stomach,” he grumbled around his first bite.  
  
“We won’t get expelled if we clear out!” He didn’t think they’d get expelled just for being on the roof even if the girl sent a faculty member after them, but he knew Akira had been told over and over that he was on thin ice since day one. He could show some cockiness when he was dealing with Kawakami, because apparently discovering their teacher moonlighted as a maid had somehow broken the ice between them (Ryuji, meanwhile, just found things ten times more awkward when she was teaching his class), but getting lectured by anyone else left him clammed up afterward. It’d be better if they ditched before then. Ryuji shot up to his feet, yanking Akira up with him by the arm that wasn’t holding a sandwich, and they quickly stashed their food and soda cans into Akira’s schoolbag before hustling down the stairwell themselves. No faculty members were storming up. Whether the girl wasn’t the type to snitch or she was having a tough time finding a teacher, it worked for Ryuji. "Come on, I know another place that should be empty,“ Ryuji told Akira, and they did their best to look casual. It said something about Akira’s deadpan expression that he could even manage that halfway when he had a needle and thread swinging freely from the front of his pants and had yanked his polo down and shoved his hands in his pockets to hide that his fly was still wide open. Ryuji wasn’t sure he was nailing it at all.  
  
The music room thankfully was actually empty. And after being caught once, Ryuji had a little more incentive to focus, and Akira kept from teasing him the one time he ended up jabbing his ring finger again anyway, instead unwrapping sandwiches and eating them as he leaned back on a stool for Ryuji. Sewing went more quickly. While Ryuji worked, Akira ate at a rate that started out as 'frenzied’, mostly from hunger but maybe a little from nerves. Gradually, though, it slowed to a steadier rate that was punctuated by swigs of soda. "All right, done,” Ryuji declared, snipping off the thread and tossing the needle away in disgust before realizing that maybe leaving pointy objects on the floor wasn’t his best idea. Luckily the tail of black thread still attached made it easy to spot, and he picked it back up and put it back more properly into the sewing kit he’d borrowed from the home ec club’s closet. That he was totally going to return. …Probably. He wondered if Akira was going to have more uniform snafus in the future. Possibly the very near future. "Can you, uh, still suck it in?“ the blond asked, because with Akira already taking a bite of the fourth and final sandwich– "Wait a sec. Are you eating _my_ sandwich?”  
  
Akira paused. Chewed slowly, buying himself time, though Ryuji could see the color rising again in his cheeks. Swallowed and said “No,” like the bold thief and liar he could be in the Metaverse, and offered the sandwich to Ryuji like there wasn’t a chunk missing. "Indirect kiss,“ he tried.  
  
Ryuji snorted, though he took the sandwich from Akira still. He was hungry, after all. "Dude, if I’m gonna swap saliva with you, I wanna do it direct,” he said, giving Akira a peck on the lips to show he wasn’t mad. It was actually kind of hilarious. "You got so hungry you forgot how to count, huh?“ he teased as he took a nearby stool to sit down himself. "Or is it my fault for forgetting how greedy this guy can be?” he said, leaning over and fondling a shallow handful of fat from Akira’s stomach before he pulled his boyfriend’s polo back down so he’d be…mostly decent if someone stumbled in on them again. Shujin’s shirts were more generously-sized than their pants, so the polo still fit Akira fairly well, but it didn’t do much to hide Akira’s thickening midsection. Ryuji appreciated that. "For real, can you still button those up? Or are you gonna have to shell out for a new uniform already? …Er. Was that too far?“  
  
Akira had started frowning, which Ryuji hadn’t expected because his boyfriend usually liked being teased as much as he liked teasing, regularly giving Ryuji obvious setups. But Akira snapped out of the frown at Ryuji’s question, blinking. "Nah, it’s just…” He waved his hand and took another gulp of soda. "Don’t wanna give this school more money for its shitty uniforms.“  
  
"Ah, yeah. They’re freaking expensive, too.” Ryuji had been doing his best to ignore a growth spurt since his first year because he didn’t want to bug his mom about it. Of course, they were making some pretty nice cash from trips to the metaverse now, but…kind of seemed like missing the whole point of rebellion to spend the profits from that on school uniforms. "So…what are you going to do now then? You gonna slow down on your 'training’? Or, I mean…you could probably still do it pretty regularly, if you switched to lighter foods…“ Ryuji had at some point decided to look up guides for eating competitions, curious to see if their way of training was mostly right. Turned out most recommended doing stuffings to increase max capacity at a salad bar or something like that, eating calorie-light foods so you didn’t blow up like Akira had been doing. A little more boring than how Akira had been training, but…a lot more practical for people who didn’t want to blow cash replacing their whole wardrobe.  
  
"I got a secret weapon,” Akira said confidently.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Akira plucked an elastic hair tie from his pocket and hooked it on the newly-secured button, then looped it through the pants’ buttonhole before pulling it back to the button and hooking it over again. He relaxed his stomach, and the flaps pulled apart but were still held up by the tension from the hair tie. Once he let down his polo, it really was impossible to see there might be anything unusual about how he was wearing his pants.  
  
He looked so goddamn pleased with himself that Ryuji couldn’t stop from cracking up, nearly spewing the soda in his mouth. "Akira–Akira, that’s a pregnant lady’s trick–“  
  
"Welp, I am expecting,” Akira said solemnly. "Many, many food babies.“  
  


* * *

  
  
_about two weeks later…_  
  
"A, and you! You’re very vulgar, and very stupid!”  
  
“What?!” Ryuji sputtered. What was _with_ this chick? First showing up out of nowhere and making them think she might actually be dangerous, then it turned out she’d been hanging out with Mona and was calling herself 'Beauty Thief’, which totally killed any threatening vibe she’d had, and now she was insulting them when they’d just met? Yeah, Mona had obviously put her up to it, but still, what the hell?  
  
And…what was with her looking so familiar? She looked around their age…light, fluffy brown hair…he didn’t know anyone like that, yet he still wanted to swear he’d seen this chick before.  
  
“And you! Um–” 'Beauty Thief’ froze on Ann, apparently forgetting whatever comment Mona had fed her (seriously, god, this was _so_ transparent), and in an effort to keep up what little momentum she had, turned her accusing finger to Akira instead. "I, I mean, you! You…you’re…um…wait…“ Her finger trembled slightly as she stared at Akira’s face. Then she glanced back at Ryuji, her eyes wide, and he had a bad feeling about where he’d seen her before. "Y-you two…”  
  
“Uh, yeah, we’re vulgar and stupid, got it, who’s next,” Ryuji said quickly, hoping to head her off, but–  
  
“You’re the perverts from the school rooftop!”  
  
“Perverts?!” Ryuji roared.  
  
“W, wait, hold on,” Morgana stammered in confusion. "Beauty Thief, I didn’t say anything like that!“  
  
"No, Mona, I _saw_ them!”  
  
“We ain’t perverts! What the hell!” Like, sure, maybe she thought they’d been screwing around on the rooftop, but that didn’t make them _perverts_–  
  
“You shouldn’t be doing such things in public! Mona was right! You are incredibly vulgar!”  
  
Ann was watching the exchange with rapt fascination. "Oh my god, you two,“ she said. "Is that why you asked me to take care of Mona at lunch that day?” she asked Joker.  
  
Mona’s eyes bugged out, and he turned to Joker as well. "Joker! Is that really why you left me with Lady Ann–! I-I mean–Panther–i-it’s not like I like you still or anything…!“  
  
"Codenames, Mona!" Futaba cackled. The hacker, who'd made the group stay in Mementos the first time after she joined until she figured out how to get her camera and video apps functional in the Metaverse, had started recording the instant 'Beauty Thief’ had yelled about them being perverts and now had video evidence that Mona hadn’t discarded his crush for Ann at all. He was probably faking about the rest, too, 'cause his feelings were hurt. That cat…  
  
Yusuke had at some point lost interest in their squabbling, and was instead framing the space scenery as viewed from Okumura’s Spaceport Palace with his hands.  
  
Akira rubbed his forehead like he had a headache brewing. "No, guys…just listen–”  
  
He tensed up as a hand clapped down on his left shoulder, just as Ryuji jumped at the sudden iron fist clenching his right shoulder. Makoto Niijima stood between them, shorter but still frighteningly imposing at the moment. "I think I would like to hear Beauty Thief’s version of events first. So, Beauty Thief,“ she said, actually managing to make the title sound serious. "Please, enlighten us. What were these two idiots doing on the school rooftop?”


End file.
